Updates for Aug 2017

A number of stocks paying out dividends in August, 笨mummy received a whooping S$2.7k for this month. No action taken this month for stocks but she looking to offload the 5K units of M1 shares purchased in July when the price pick up. 

The paperwork for the refinancing from UOB to OCBC is more or less done. Lawyer had served the notice to UOB, valuation report received (valuation actually drop compared to one and half year ago) and would be visiting the lawyer in early Sep to sign the documents. Hopefully everything done before end of the year as the UOB rate is going to move from 1.58% to 1.78% on Feb 2018. OCBC rate of 1.30% for first three years is the best rate 笨mummy has seen so far for an outstanding balance of 240K. It also comes with a cash back of $1,600 which fully covered the legal fee and a $100 takashimaya voucher. in total, 笨mummy only need to fork out $250 for the valuation report for the refinancing. 

She had subscribed for her first Singapore Saving Bond (the one for the month of Sep 17) using some of her fund in the eSaver account as currently the interest from eSaver that she is getting is around 1.05% (for balance less than $50,000) and the Sep Singapore Saving Bond is offering 1.15% for the first year. The great thing about this Singapore Saving Bond is that you could cash out any time at a cost of $2 and the interest would be Pro-rated. Going forward, if the interest rate from the eSaver pick up significantly, she may consider to switch back. If the interest rate of the Oct Singapore Saving Bond is higher than the Sep one, she may move another batch of her fund in eSaver to subscribe for the bond. 

These past weeks were tiring as both Child 1 & 2 are sick (still not recovered yet) and it is so hard to get a good night sleep and also getting anything done as Child 2 is especially whinny when she is sick. Ironically saying, 笨mummy had reaped the benefits of a SAHM. She can focus to take care of her children when they are sick, does not have the guilt of going to work while the children are sick and also no need to see boss' black face when applying for leave to take care of children or colleagues' black face for cover her work when she is on leave. 

Dividend / interest for month of Aug 17:  
M1 - S$ 780
Keppel Corp - S$ 240
OCBC - S$ 195.48
CDL H Trust - S$ 434.60
Suntec REIT - S$ 249.30
Ascott Trust - S$ 369.16
Asprial Bond - S$ 52.07
Capital Mall Bond (3.08%) - S$ 76.37
ST Engineering - S$ 300
ComfortDelgro - S$ 43.50

Dividend received in Year 2014	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in Year 2015	$ 8,978.59
Dividend received in Year 2016	$ 12,145.15
Dividend received in Aug 2017	$ 2,740.48
Dividend received in Year 2017 to date	$ 9,238.28

Saving on childcare expenses - applying for childcare subsidy

As mentioned in an earlier post, 笨mummy received a call from a childcare centre that there is an infant care vacancy for Child 2. She visited the childcare centre and had a rather positive vibe on the environment as well as the teachers. 笨mummy went ahead to register for a two week trial that would commerce in Sept.

笨mummy is quite shocked by:

(1) how expensive infant care fees are in Singapore

The one which she registered was quoting a monthly infant care school fee in the range of S$1,364.25. She also did a check with the other big names and noted that the fees are also within the same range.

(2) the big difference between the government subsidy amount for a working mother and a non working mother.

Being Singapore citizen, there is government subsidy available depending on the working status of the mother:

• For working mothers - $600
• For non-working mothers - $150

The difference in the subsidy between the two is S$450, which is quite substantial.

In her attempt to find ways to reduce the childcare expenses, 笨mummy did some research on the subsidy and these are what she found out:

• All parents with Singapore Citizen children enrolled in child care centres licensed by ECDA will continue to be eligible for a Basic Subsidy (either S$150 for families with non-working mother or S$600 for infant care and S$300 for families with working mother )
• To be eligible for the basic subsidy as a working mother, one need to be working at least 56 hours per month (i.e 1.86 hours/day)
• For a freelance or self-employed, one's income will be based on the monthly income derived from the last available net trade income assessed by the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) in the latest Notice of Assessment. If the Notice of Assessment is not available, a Statutory Declaration on the working hours and monthly income will be needed to supplement the application for subsidies.

Though 笨mummy is a SAHM, she spends time at home to generate income, such as selling stuff on Carsouell, as well as some freelance assignments that she could find. Given that the requirement is a minimum of 56 hours per month, which is something that 笨mummy could easily meet since she already spent a 1 to 2 hours a day to sort out the pre-loved/used items, taking photos, listing them on carousell, communicating with buyers and arranging to mail out the items. 笨mummy decided to give ECDA helpline a call to check if she could qualify for working mother subsidy for childcare as an online seller on carousell. 

To her surprise, the officer from ECDA informed her as an online seller she could qualify for the working mother subsidy and she needs to make a statutory declaration with the Commissioner of Oath that she has met the required working hours of 56 hours per month. It also does not matter whether her online business is registered with ACRA.

笨mummy arranged for Child 1 to her in-law in the afternoon while she made a trip with Child 2 to the Commissior of Oath located at the level 3M of Supreme Court Building. Details of the Commissior of Oath as follows:

Level 3M

Supreme Court Building

1 Supremel Court Lane

Singapore 178879

The whole process was fast and took less than 10 minutes:

• Once arrived at the office, inform the person at the counter that you are here to make a statutory declaration for working hours for childcare subsidy.
• Request for the declaration form from the person, fill it up accordingly
• Make payment via NETs of S$25 at the counter
• You would be call into one of the rooms available and the Commissior of Oath (i.e. The officer in the room) would instruct you to read a paragraph to make the statutory declaration. 
• The Commissior of Oath would then sign and stamp the declaration form and pass the copy to you once it is done. 

The original declaration form needs to be submitted to the childcare for the subsidy application.

CDL H Trust Right issue result update

As mentioned in her earlier post, 笨mummy has subscribed to the right issue of CDL H Trust - her full entitlement of 1,600 units as well as excess rights of 6,400 units. She received a total of 2,600 consisting of 1,600 of her entitlement and excess of 1,000. 

 After the right issue, 笨mummy now has a total of 10,600 units of CDL H Trust.

Updates for Jul 2017

笨mummy was expecting July to be a quiet month like in the past since it is not a period where much cash inflow is expected from any of her stock holding. But things turn out rather differently, 笨mummy had:  

• Divested Ascendas REIT shares that she bought in Dec 2016 at S$2.30 at S$2.60. She gained a decent profit. The cash free up from this sales were used to fund the Netlink Trust IPO and CDL H Trust right issue. 
• Purchased 5,000 units of M1 at S$1.86 and this average down the buying price of her M1 holding which now totalled to 15,000 units. 
• Subscribed to the right issue of CDL H Trust. She had subscribed to her full entitlement of 1,600 units as well as excess rights of 6,400 units. 
• Subscribed to IPO of Netlink Trust and managed to be allocated 3,000 units of the new shares
• Managed to secure a letter of offer for refinancing from OCBC for her HDB housing loan. Currently she is enjoying a fixed rate of 1.58% from UOB till Feb 2018 and thereafter the rate would move to 1.78% and the offer from OCBC is a fixed rate 1.30% for the first two years. 

On personal matters, 笨mummy had been busy this month. She was approached by two recruitment firms and attended two interviews arranged by the firms respectively. She also received update from a childcare centre that there is a vacancy for infant care and she could enrol Child 2 if she needs to go back to work. 

While she enjoys her time being a stay at home mum, she still yearn for the recognition and financial benefits from working. She shall see how things work out in the next few weeks. Maybe things would remain status quo if no favorable response from both interviews.  

Dividend received in Year 2014	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in Year 2015	$ 8,978.59
Dividend received in Year 2016	$ 12,145.15
Dividend received in Jul 2017	$ 0
Dividend received in Year 2017 to date	$ 6,497.80

Updates for Jun 2017

Six months has passed and the total dividends received to date is only S$ 6,497.80 and 笨mummy is S$ 8,502.20 away from her target of S$15,000. This seems to be an unattainable goal based on current result, but we shall see how things go. 

Following Ascott Trust, another of 笨mummy's shares (CDL H- Trust) is announcing rights issue. 笨mummy would likely to be subscribing to her full entitlement plus excess rights depending on how much spare cash she has at the moment. As she has both holdings of this stock in SCB and CDP, more admin effort would be expected. 


Dividend / interest for month of Jun 17:  
Ascendas REIT - S$ 293.85
OCBC - S$ 195.48
Ascendas H Trust - S$ 240.80

Dividend received in Year 2014	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in Year 2015	$ 8,978.59
Dividend received in Year 2016	$ 12,145.15
Dividend received in Jun 2017	$ 730.14
Dividend received in Year 2017 to date	$ 6,497.80

Saving tips - part 1

Having a new role as the CFO of the household, 笨mummy needs to improvise and learn a few new tricks to manage her expenses well. Here are some of the "tricks" she picked up in the recent weeks for sharing. 

1) Looking out for samples before checkout

Before she checkout of her groceries shopping on online websites, such as Redmart and  Fairprice online, 笨mummy would always do an additional step to search for the keyword "sample" to see what items are being offerred as samples for 笨mummy to pick up before she completes her shopping. 

In the recent shopping on Redmart, she had picked up 

• A Nescafe Gold Latte Coffee Sample pack for S$0.25 which consists of 4 packs of the Nescafe Gold Latte Coffee (which a packet of 12 could cost around $6.50).
• A sample 370g tin of Enfagrow A+ Gentlease stage 2 stage for Child 2 at $0.10. This is a real bargain considered how expensive milk powder can be, and being, older and starting to weaning, Child 2 has no problem drinking milk powder from other brands)

Below is a printscreen of what are offered on Redmart that you can find: 

2) Qoo10 Gift card

As a regular shopper on Qoo10, it is only now that 笨mummy discovers the gift card. Qoo10 allows a shopper can actually buy gift card of $100 value on Qoo10 at a discount of 3%. If you are a regular buyer, like 笨mummy, you can actually save $3 for every $100 you spent when you purchase the gift card and use the gift card to top up your Q Money. 

That's all 笨mummy has to share for now. If anyone has any saving tip, do share with her. Saving is caring. :)

How to minimise individual income tax for a working couple

Although Singapore’s tax rate is one of the lowest in the world, 笨mummy hold the belief that one should aim to pay his/her fair share of tax and claim all the reliefs that one is entitled to. As a working couple, 笨mummy always need to take into account of her hubby’s income and reliefs as well as hers when preparing the individual income tax filing as to minimise the tax payable for them as a couple.

Here are her workings in computing the prefect combination of reliefs to be split between the couple to achieve the lowest tax payable possible:

• Step 1: List down the income of both couples as well as the tax reliefs available. This can be easily extracted from the draft form B1 when you log in the IRAS tax portal. 

• Step 2: Identify the “non-shareable” reliefs and the “shareable” reliefs. Non-shareable reliefs are those that are only allowable to a particular person, for example, working mother child relief is allowed to the mother (i.e. the wife), while earned income relief, CPF relief, etc are only allow to that particular individual (i.e. the husband or the wife). While shareable relief can be split and share amongst the couple. 

• Step 3: Compute the chargeable income net of non-shareable reliefs

• Step 4: Split the shareable reliefs according to the highest marginal tax rates

Here is an example for illustration of how the above work:

Assuming both husband and wife are working and they have one child. The wife would be entitled to the working mother relief which is 15% of her total income. 

INCOME		Husband	Wife
Employment income		100,000	100,000
Other income		-	-
TOTAL INCOME		100,000	100,000
DEDUCTIONS AND RELIEFS
Non-shareable reliefs
Approved Donations		68	65
Earned income relief		1,000	1,000
Working mother's child relief		NA	14,990
Grandparent caregiver relief		NA	3,000
CPF/provident Fund relief		17,000	16,000
Course fees relief		-	-
Foreign maid levy relief		NA	-
CPF cash top-up relief		-	-
Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) relief		-	-
NSman(Self/wife/parent) relief		1,500	750
TOTAL NON-SHAREABLE RELIEFS		19,568	35,805
Shareable reliefs
Qualifying child relief	4,000
Parent relief	0
Net chargeable income net of non-shareable reliefs		80,432	64,195
Husband tax rate		Amount	Tax rate
		20,000	0%
		10,000	2%
		10,000	3.50%
		40,000	7%
		432	11.50%
		80,432
Wife tax rate		Amount	Tax rate
		20,000	0%
		10,000	2%
		10,000	3.50%
		24,195	7%
		64,195

As in this example, the amount of $432 of husband attracts the highest tax rate of 11.50%, follows by the $40,000 (Husband) and $24,195 (wife) attracting the second highest rate of 7%. The couple has a few choices of split the child relief: 

1. S$432 to husband and balance to wife, 

1. All $4,000 to husband